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[Updated below]

Following up on the infuriating case of Raquel Nelson, a mother who was convicted of homicide when her child was struck and killed by a drunk driver in Marietta, Georgia, I think it’s appropriate to bring in a bit of Georgia law. Nelson was charged with jaywalking since there were no painted lines indicating a crosswalk at the busy intersection where she and her children crossed the street. The nearest painted crosswalk was half a mile away. Prosecutors viewed this as grounds for a homicide case, and the rest, as they say, is history.

However, painted crosswalks may be entirely irrelevant in this case.

On Page 94 of the Georgia Drivers Manual we learn that “Crosswalks exist on all four corners of intersections even when they are not marked by painted lines.”

I’m not sure if this even came up during Nelson’s trial, but it strikes me as very relevant to the case. If Georgia law stipulates that every intersection is a crosswalk “even when they are not marked by painted lines” then Nelson could not have beenlegally jaywalking to begin with. Without the jaywalking charge, I fail to see how she could be guilty of anything else, and the entire case falls apart.

Hopefully Nelson is able to appeal the conviction, and hopefully she is granted her appeal. Until that time, however, she will still be apart from her family, swept up in a justice system that has far too often forgot the meaning of the word “justice” in the first place – at least when applying it to minorities and the poor.

UPDATE.

The photograph in this post at Transportation for America complicates this narrative to some degree. Nelson crossed the street at the bus stop on Austell Road, across the street from Austell Circle where her home is located. This isn’t exactly an intersection since Austell Circle isn’t a cross-street. Before seeing this photograph I had read reports describing this as an “intersection” – clearly it is not, though it is certainly where two streets come together.

Either way, this crossing is obviously a problem. As the post notes:

If you look at our pedestrian fatalities map for metro Atlanta (or any other metro, for that matter) and zoom in, you see that the dead bodies line up like soldiers along certain corridors – your first clue that the design is not matching up with the use of the street. Austell Road/SR 5 is one of several such corridors in this area of Southeast Cobb County, which was built as auto-only suburbia but now is home to many lower-income families who often don’t have access to a car.

This is a major issue in inner suburbs all across the country. Neither the public transportation nor the highway designs work for the new populations that are living, working and walking in these areas. People are being punished and killed, needlessly, simply for being pedestrians. Incidentally, these are also the areas where millions of older Americans are expecting to “age in place”, so we’ll see more seniors trying to cross the road or catch the bus. Our research in Dangerous by Design showed that thousands of lives could be saved – and millions more lives improved – by retrofitting these dangerous roads, as many communities are trying to do.

Wouldn’t it be simpler to put in a stoplight and a crosswalk at these locations, rather than spend all that money to prosecute jaywalking mothers?